Abstract

In Lockwood, I defended a conception of phenomenal qualities, according to which they can exist unsensed. Edward Feser points out that a key argument to which I appealed, in support of my claim that phenomenal qualities can ‘outrun awareness’, fails to show that there are phenomenal qualities of which we are unaware; rather, it shows only that phenomenal qualities have attributes of which we are unaware. This may be granted. But I argue that we can certainly imagine experimental data which would provide support for my thesis. Moreover, the conception of unsensed phenomenal qualities is, so I claim, a perfectly meaningful one, and anyone who is prepared to entertain the idea of phenomenal qualities having attributes of which the subject is unaware, can have no principled objection to the idea of there being phenomenal qualities of which the subject is unaware.